AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - A leading Jordanian neurologist who regularly examined Yasser Arafat said on Friday that poisoning was the "highest" probable cause of the Palestinian leader's mysterious death and urged that an autopsy be performed.

"One of the causes of platelet deficiency is poison," said Dr. Ashraf al-Kurdi, who examined a gravely ill Arafat in his besieged compound in the West Bank town of Rammallah two weeks ago.

Arafat died Thursday in Paris, where he had flown Oct. 29 for treatment after tests indicated he had a low count of blood platelets, components that help clotting.

Although "not definitive, I believe the highest reason for Arafat's mysterious death is poisoning," al-Kurdi told The Associated Press in an interview on Friday.

"Therefore, there should be an autopsy performed," added al-Kurdi, who had been Arafat's personal physician for the last two decades.

There has been widespread speculation that Arafat could have been poisoned by Israel. Neither doctors nor Palestinian leaders have said what caused Arafat's death after days in a coma at a Paris hospital.

“When human beings loose their humaneness, they turn into wild animals. This is the only difference between humans and animals.”

What would happen if Palestinians danced, gave out sweets and celebrated the death of the wildest, most treacherous, engineer of Massacres and Terrorism, the Israeli Prime Minister Sharon? This worst of all neighbors, the enemy of peace and anti-Semitic Israel, states: “Israel was released Thursday from the punishment of the most treacherous and wildest of its enemies, Arafat”. “With Arafat's death Israel has breathed a huge sign of relief”. The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz published this insult a few hours before the start of Yasser Arafat's burial ceremony In Egypt, insulting the feeling of the Palestinians and the representants of the countries who took place in Arafat's funeral

The Israeli officials, rightists and leftists, expressed their happiness at Arafat's death.

“Arafat's death is a historic turning point” said the engineer of bloody massacres, Sharon.

“I hated Arafat”, said the Israeli Minister of Injustice, Yosef Lapid, blaming him for global terrorism and the failure of the achievement of peace.

“Arafat's death is the beginning of a new Era in our relationship with the Palestinians” said State President Moshe Katsav.

“Arafat's death removed a thick cloud imposed on life and the freedom values, the Epidemic has vanished...” said Ivey Itam, the fascist of the Mefdal.

Yossi Lapid, Israeli Minister of Injustice. He hated Arafat.

These hate-filled statements from prominent Israeli politicians are clear expressions of Anti-Semitism and are a bad omen for a future neighborhood relationship between Palestinians and Jews. These are not the words of people interested in peace with their neighbors. They are the words of people who prefer continued bloodshed before peace every time they are given the choice.

The world needs to reconsider who are the terrorists and which side really wants a just peace in this conflict which has already lasted for too long. Western politicians should take a very close look at people like Lapid, Katsav, Sharon and others who continuously afford more money and protection from you. Probably you will discover that these people are not viable partners for anything, and that any association with them will ultimately ruin you and your country. We Palestinians have long since discovered this in the hard way.

The Israeli Political Arabic Newspaper “Al-Ittihad”, wrote an article titled “Unlimited Impudence”. The Israeli rightists rushed to the streets demonstrating their happiness, holding hate filled and Anti-Semitic posters, handing out sweets and burning Arafat pictures, insulting their Palestinian neighbours, the Israeli Arab citizens, and the Arab world. The American Jewish squatters from the Kach terror movement, Baruch Marzel and Itamar ben Gaber, took part in the Jewish celebration of Arafat's death in Jerusalem.

Yasser Arafat

In Paris Arafat's coffin was carried by a French Honour Guard, draped with the Palestinians flag during a ceremony at the French military base. Arafat was given full military honours by France. This was a slap in the face of the Israeli State.

Dignitaries from over 60 countries took part in the funeral procession for Yasser Arafat in Egypt, but Israel sent nobody. President Yasser Yasser Arafat cried for the death of Israeli former Prime Minster Ytzhaq Rabin and he visited his widow Lea Rabin in secret to express his condolences. For people who constantly talk about peace, Israel shows a very strange behavior.

Million of Palestinians rushed to the streets in the West Bank, Gaza and overseas mourning the death of their President Yasser Arafat. “Yasser Arafat is the Palestinian Nation, and the Palestinian Nation are Yasser Arafat”, said all Palestinians.

All Palestinians hold Israel responsible for the crime of Arafat's death by poisoning. The current PA is trying to cover up the cause of our Presidents death because they took part in this crime, they wanted to replace Arafat. The corrupt foreign minister Nabil Shaath should be the last one to speak about Arafat's death. He is a liar who repeats what the U.S and Israel want him to say. This is known by all Palestinians.

Khaled Mishal survived a poisoning attempt by the Israeli Mossad in Jordan.

Khaled Mishal, a political leader of Hamas, stated “I hold Israel responsible for the murder of Arafat. All reports by doctors in the last two weeks indicate that President Arafat was poisoned. French and Arab doctors were not able to find proof or evidence in my blood when I was poisoned by Israel's Mossad in Jordan. Israel was forced to bring an antidote after two of it's agents were held in Jordan”.

According to Al-Haqaeq (link in Arabic), Arafat's personal doctor of about 20 years, Dr. Ashraf Al-Kurdi, a former Jordanian Health Minister, exhorted the Palestinian Nation to ask about the causes for the illness of Arafat, and the examinations made in France. Dr. Al-Kurdi examined Arafat in the Muqata after he complained of sickness feelings. He told Arafat that he would treatment which was not available at the Muqata meaning that he suspected poisoning, and soon after he was denied access to Arafat by Arafat's entourage at the PA. Suha then brought in her own doctors from Egypt and Tunis. Soon after, Arafat was flown to Paris.

1995 - Picture with Arafat in the Sarayah in Gaza (Pic Credit: Official PA Photo)

The open questions are:

When will the PA come clear that President Arafat was poisoned ?
What was the price for buying the silence of the current PA about the poisoning of Arafat ?
Is the PA silence a temporary or a permanent one?
Will the PA start a real investigation into the poisoning of Arafat ?
Will the PA investigate the role of Mr. Nabil Abu-Rudeinah in this crime ?
Was the poisoning of Arafat discussed between Israel and other Arab countries ?
What is the next step in the political scene after the burial of Arafat?

The Palestinian nation has the right to know the cause of Arafat's death. This should not be a secret, Arafat is the nation and the nation is Arafat. The PA should honestly say what caused Arafat's death, without political considerations.

Arafat leaves a troubled legacy but no doubt that there is a Palestinian people

By Helena Cobban

BEIRUT – Yasser Arafat is gone but his legacy - the existence of the Palestinian nation - is intact. He went from being a guerrilla fighter to a Nobel Prize winner to a prisoner in his narrow office in the West Bank. He may have failed to win a lasting victory for the Palestinian cause, but his tireless dedication to it and his mastery of minor tactics did much throughout the past half century to keep the cause alive.
In 1977, in Algiers, I saw him defuse an ugly-looking rebellion at a big Palestinian meeting by dramatically pulling a piece of paper from his pocket and saying, "In this letter the leader of your faction promised such-and-such!" No one asked to see the paper - which may well have been blank. But his opponent was taken completely by surprise and the rebellion subsided. Mr. Arafat's stage management was flawless throughout.

Arafat, who died yesterday, was the last of the founders of the modern Palestinian nationalist movement.

He was born in Cairo in 1929 to a family of Palestinian small traders. His mother died when he was 5, and he was then shuttled between relatives in Cairo and Jerusalem. He always spoke fondly of the labrynthine streets and alleys of Jerusalem's walled Old City, then ruled under the "mandate" that Britain had over Palestine. But a defining moment for him was the night in his childhood when British soldiers beat down the door of his uncle's home in Jerusalem, terrifying everyone inside.

He was 19, an engineering student in Cairo, when Israel was born. The Palestinians' dreams of winning their own rapid statehood collapsed as their land was divided between Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees poured out of what became Israel. Palestinians everywhere feared that their nation's long history, culture, and attachment to their land could be completely obliterated by Israel's raw power, which was buttressed by the guilt that many Westerners felt over their countries' actions - or inaction - during the European Holocaust.

For Arafat, all those early troubles produced a multilayered sense of loss that seemed to motivate him throughout his life: the loss of his mother perhaps, but equally the loss of his nation's independence and dignity, and the ever-present threat of its political annihilation.

As a young man he shuttled between Cairo, Egyptian-ruled Gaza, and Kuwait - where he started his own engineering firm - to brainstorm with other Palestinians over how to restore their losses. In 1957 he helped found the exile-based nationalist group, Fatah, which slowly built networks prior to launching a low-level guerrilla war against Israel. In 1968, Fatah assumed power within the broader Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and the next year Arafat became the PLO's leader.

He worked tirelessly for the nationalist cause. I had a number of interviews with him between 1980 and this year. Most started long after 10 p.m. - and a line of other people would still be waiting to meet him after our meeting finished an hour or more later. He was a gracious host and a pious Muslim believer. Within the strange cocoon of a life dominated by security fears he lived simply, enjoying a glass of hot water sweetened with honey and (in recent years) a spartan diet of boiled vegetables. Personally fastidious, he'd arrange and re-arrange his trademark headdress "just so," and his hands were often pink from repeated washing. He was also a sentimentalist. In 1967 he took time off from one guerrilla "mission" in the newly occupied West Bank to visit his childhood home in Jerusalem. But because he judged the Israelis might have it under surveillance, he never went in to greet the aunts who were still living there.

In 1990, he reversed earlier avowals that he was "married to the cause" and married Suha Tawil, a Palestinian Christian who'd worked for him in Tunis. She converted to Islam when they married, but the fact that he chose a Christian for a wife was reassuring to Palestine's large population of Christians. In 1995, they had a daughter, Zahwa.

Arafat was always a controversial figure. His role in organizing and, later, apparently condoning Palestinian violence made Israelis fearful and angry. But for Palestinians at home and abroad, the guerrillas' actions - though militarily negligible - restored a sense of confidence and nationhood.

After 1973 he switched his emphasis from guerrilla struggle to diplomatic engagement. In 1974, Fatah adopted a new, more moderate program of creating a Palestinian state in just the West Bank and Gaza, instead of replacing all of Israel as it and the PLO had earlier urged. In 1975, I saw Arafat at a huge rally here in Beirut, using extravagant hand gestures and emotional evocations of the Palestinians' many losses to argue for the new "two-state" program.

In 1993 the push for this program achieved some success when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin concluded the Oslo Agreement with the PLO. (Arafat shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Rabin and Shimon Peres for that breakthrough.) The following year, Arafat met an adoring welcome from residents of Gaza and the West Bank. Two years later, they swept him to victory in the only free and fair election they have ever been allowed to hold. By then, though, Palestinian leadership was already in disarray. Fatah had started out with a deliberately collective leadership. But by 1994, other key leaders had died or been killed, and Arafat was alone, aided only by figures of lesser political weight.

In addition, after his return to Palestine in 1994, the tactics of underground organizing and military planning that Arafat had perfected during long exile proved quite incapable of winning the full-fledged state for which he and his people yearned. Thus started a decade of slowly unfolding tragedy - for him, for Palestinians everywhere, and for the large number of Israelis who wanted to see a two-state solution to their nation's dilemma.

Other Israelis, led by Ariel Sharon and his Likud Party, had other ideas. They used the "interim period" decreed by Oslo to expand their grip on Palestinian lands, and absent any braking hand from the US, they were very successful. The number of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank doubled in the Oslo years. Arafat never developed an effective strategy to resist that land grab. Instead he drifted - sometimes condoning the violence by some Palestinians, sometimes cracking down hard on internal opponents.

Arafat's tragedy and that of his people was that he wasn't up to the challenges that history assigned him. He was not a Mandela; but equally, he did not for long have a De Klerk figure to deal with. Rabin, who started to play that transformative role, was killed by an Israeli extremist before he achieved anything lasting.

But at least Arafat and his colleagues achieved this: Back in 1969, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir voiced a judgment shared by many in the West when she said, "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people." But today, few people doubt that the Palestinian nation exists, and neither Israel nor its supporters can ignore the Palestinians' claim to establish a sovereign state in a portion of historic Palestine.